The word bracket is not commonly used in everyday language. One
may go through a full life and perhaps never even get to use the
word bracket. This may lead one to the conclusion that the word
bracket is not quite that useful. On the contrary, it's more
common than one realizes and perhaps more useful than first
recognized.
Volt in
Among several synonyms of the word bracket is a very common
word--group. There are groups everywhere, at any given point in
time and space. This is a direct result of people's
predisposition to label and organize. When a person or things
are put in a group, it is therefore put in a bracket.
Despite the word bracket and group being synonyms though, it is
not common to use the word bracket to describe a peer group for
instance. It sounds funny to say, "This is my peer bracket".
Therefore, the use of the word bracket must be utilized only
with certain groups.
Reproduce and use
We learn multiplication in grade school and incidentally, this
may very well be one's first concrete encounter with the concept
of a bracket.
On the blackboard, the teacher will illustrate objects inside a
bracket to visually explain the principle of multiplication. In
this case, we see objects grouped into brackets. The teacher
will separate the same apples into different sub groups and
enclose them in a bracket to keep the same apples apart.
Souk for the soul
Outside of the classroom illustrations, a bracket is also used
to group things into categories. It is used for instance in
Marketing to categorize a target market or in plain words, a
group of people who should buy a particular brand.
This is the way for brands to know better than to sell
disposable diapers to a teenager whose sole pre-occupation are
boys and the latest fashion.
The super sorter
A bracket is then used to divide and group a market to make
marketing efforts easier and more focused. So that the group
that is most likely to be the buyers are further sorted into
brackets of age, gender, socio-economic class, and so forth.
A bracket is very valuable to marketing as this decides the way
something is sold and bought. Imagine a world without
brackets--everything would be so random and arbitrary.
As first established, it is human nature to label and organize,
so much so that it tends to become an obsession. Take beer for
instance. There are several types of beer under one umbrella
brand. There's the light beer for people who don't like the
heavy feeling of booze but want the same buzz. Then there's the
beer with the stronger alcoholic content for the hard core
drinkers. There's the diet beer to follow the latest low
carbohydrate diet fad. Then there's the plain regular kind for
the plain old regular type folks.
All those types of beer to choose from, thanks to the the
bracket.
Let there be light
According to the Bible, in the beginning there was nothing. Then
from nothing, came light and we could see everything and then
came the need to identify and segregate.
Without labels and categories, all things far and wide would
just be the same, with no identifying differences. There will be
no need for several types of beer that in the end will just make
you drunk no matter what type it is. No need to first divide the
same apple illustrations on the board only to multiply them
together later.
Thus, the bracket was invented.
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